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Sunday, November 13, 2016

Weekend Cooking: 3 Butternut Squash Recipes

Each weekend, Beth Fish Reads hosts Weekend Cooking. This is perfect for me since I love food and cooking almost as much as I love books!

Although our local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) ended at the end of October for the year, we still had a LOT of winter squashes left to use, including 6 butternut squashes! Thankfully, my sons are away at college because they don't like winter squash at all. My husband will eat it, but it's not his favorite, either, and he was already getting sick of eating it roasted, the way I normally prepare it. For the record, I love winter squashes, especially butternut!

So, I went on a search for some new recipes that used butternut squash in different ways. We have prepared and eaten these three recipes over the past couple of weeks and thoroughly enjoyed them all!

I started with my favorite source for recipes, Cooking Light. The first recipe, Golden Winter Soup, I had made once before - for friends for lunch - but my husband hadn't tasted it yet. It is one of my all-time favorite soups - creamy and so full of flavor! I can't eat dairy, so I substituted coconut milk for the half-and-half (which turned out wonderful) and had to skip the cheese toast on the side. I also used an immersion blender to make both preparation and cleanup easier. Without the dairy, that leaves the soup with very little protein, so we just added some grilled some chicken sausage on the side. This soup is delicious and perfect for a cold day, for lunch or for dinner. Super easy, too.

The second butternut squash recipe I tried was also from Cooking Light: Squash-Apple Turnovers. Another winner! These were delicious. The only change I made was that I couldn't find refrigerated dinner roll dough, so I used premade pie crust dough. We served the turnovers as a side dish with roasted cauliflower and the leftover Green Curry Fritters I wrote about last week. My husband said that even though he was sick of squash, these yummy turnovers fooled him into thinking he was eating pie! They were wonderful, both at dinner and leftover for lunch the next day.

Finally, I turned to my favorite cookbook, Curtis Stone: What's For Dinner? (review at link). Curtis had a very simple recipe for Thai Red Curry with Butternut Squash and Chickpeas. I never would have thought of using squash in a curry, but my husband and I love Thai curries of all kinds, so I gave it a try. We ran into a slight problem: the can of chickpeas I pulled out of the pantry had expired over 9 years ago! My husband was appalled and threw them out. I had already decided to add chicken to the curry anyway, so the absence of the chickpeas didn't affect the dish much. As with all of Stone's recipes, this one was bursting with flavor and delicious. We thoroughly enjoyed it for dinner, and I practically licked my bowl clean after eating the leftovers for lunch the next day.

So, three winning recipes for butternut squash - and all a bit different from the usual preparations!

Now, I still have 2 butternut squashes left, 1 acorn squash, and a kabocha squash. Any ideas??

A can that expired 9 years ago is pretty impressive. I assume you knew you'd really had it that long!

Squash soup, I agree, can really be a treat. I've found recipes for squash soup from a huge number of different cuisines -- European, Asian, Caribbean, African, South American, Australian, Midwestern USA, Native American USA, etc. Some are called pumpkin soup but all use varieties of orange squash.

About Me

I'm a freelance writer who loves to read and cook. My husband and I have two sons, and we all enjoy travel and being outdoors. My older son and I both have chronic illnesses, but we focus on finding joy in every day!